Being Good about Being Good

One of the characteristics of Christian love is goodness. My last two posts have looked at what that means. Goodness is conducting ourselves towards others in the same way that God conducts Himself towards us. Goodness is learned by being faithful and obedient to God’s Law. To be good means to be kind, to be helpful, to be faithful, and to want the best for people, regardless of how we are treated by them. If we are going to be like God, if we are going to love like God, we are going to have to people who love to do good.

Let me share a couple of questions I think we need to ask ourselves in light of what Scripture says about love being shown by goodness.

Do I delight in doing good? 2 Thessalonians 3:13 (NLT) says, never get tired of doing good. Love’s love is holiness. Love is attracted to it, works for it, responds to it, and desires it. Part of holiness is goodness. Goodness should not be a chore. It is more than a duty. We should never be tired of doing good. In other words, we should not be saying to ourselves, “Oh great, more good works to do. I am so tired of doing good!” While I believe it is better to do good when we don’t want to do it, not wanting to do it is sin.

This was the point of Jesus’ parable of the prodigal son in Luke 15. You know the story. A wealthy man has two sons. The younger son talks his father into giving him his inheritance now so he did not need to wait until his father died to get it. He then wasted it all on wild living. He finally comes to his senses and returns home to beg his father to take him back as a slave, seeing he was unworthy to be a son. But the father runs to him, kisses him, puts a ring on his finger restoring his birthright, killed his best calf, and had a party to celebrate his son’s return.

But instead of sharing his father’s joy, the older son is outraged and refuses to come to the welcome home party. Listen to what he says to his father when he comes out to find him:

Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!

All that obedience, all that goodness looked good on the outside, but when you see it for what it is, you realize there are two lost sons in this story. One who was lost but came home and one who got lost at home. He did not care about his lost brother. He screwed up and it was better that he was gone. And he did not love his father. He obeyed him because if he did his duty, he would get his father’s estate when he died. How different is that from his younger brother? Not much.

When you think that what you do is more important than why you are doing it and whom you are doing it for you will end up like this older brother. Do you delight in doing good?

Am I working at doing good? 2 Peter 1:5-8 (NIV) says,

For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Peter says we need to make every effort to add to our faith goodness. We should not rush by those three words, “make every effort.” There is a reason the Holy Spirit directed Peter’s pen to write those words. Goodness is not easy. Even with the Holy Spirit living in us, even with the new heart of faith that God gives us when we accept Him as Lord and Savior, being good is hard. It is hard work. Peter acknowledges that. But, it is worth it. It is even necessary. Peter says in the next verse, But if anyone does not have them, he is nearsighted and blind, and has forgotten that he has been cleansed from his past sins.

If you are going to learn to love others as Christ loves you, then He is going to make sure that you are learning how to show good as He shows good. That means God is going to bring you into a multitude of experiences, places, and seasons, where it is dark and where your goodness is the only light.

It is hard to tell how good you are when you are good to people who are good back to you. Anyone can be nice and kind when the people they are with are nice and kind. As Jesus said, “even sinners do that.” This spiritual fruit is most clearly seen when it is given to people who don’t deserve it, who have hurt or offended us, and who don’t appreciate or recognize it. We see that in the story of the prodigal son. We see the goodness of the father in showing good to his sons even when they don’t deserve it. We see the hypocrisy of the goodness of the elder brother in that his goodness was limited by his own selfishness. Jesus tells us that God causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good (Matthew 5:45).We know that God is good because He is good to all (Psalm 145:9). We know that He is good because While we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8).We need to be learning that the Golden Rule is not optional. It is not only for Sundays and major holidays. It is God’s rule for us every day, in every situation, and in every relationship.